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Old Highland Industries. 397
breakfasted there was no person at lionie, nor was there any phice
where refreslnnent was to be had nearer than Dores, which is
eighteen niih^s from Fort- Augustus. With this disagreea])le jirospect
he proceeded about tliree miles further, and turned aside to the
first cottage he saw, where he found a liale looking, lively, tidy, little,
middle-aged woman spinning wool, with a ])ot on the lire and some
greens ready to be put into it. She understood no Knglish, and
his Gaelic was then by no means good, though he spoke it well
enough to be intelligible. She informed him that she had nothing
in the house that could be eaten except cheese, a little sour cream,
and some lohisky. On being asked rather sharply how she could
dress the greens without meal, she good-humouredly told him
that there was plenty of meal in the croft, pointing to some unreaped
barley that stood dead ripe and dry befure the door, and
if he could wait half-an-hour he should have brose and butter,
bread and cheese, bread and milk, or anything else that he chose.
To this he most readily assented, as well on account of the singularity
of the proposal, as of the necessity of the time ; and the
good dame set with all possible expedition about her arduous
undertaking. She first of all broiight him some cream in a bottle,
telling him, ' He that will not work neither will he eat ; if he
wished for butter, he must shake that bottle with all his might,
and sing to it like a mavis all the time; for unless he sung to it no
butter would come.' She then went to the croft, cut down some
barley, burnt the straw to dry the grain, rubbed the grain between
her hands, and threw it up before the wind to separate it from the
husks ; ground it upon a quem, sifted it, made a bannock of the
meal, set it up to bake before the fire, and lastly went to milk her
cow, that was reposing during the heat of the day, and eating some
outside cabbage leaves ayont the hallau. She sung like a lark
the whole time, varying the strain according to the employment to
which it was adapted. In the meanwhile a hen cackled under the
eaves of the cottage, two new laid eggs were immediately plunged
into the boiling pot, and in less than half-an-hour the jioor, starv-
ing, faint and wayworn minstrel, with wonder and delight, sat
down to a repast that, under such circumstances, would have been
a feast for a prince."
The simple mode of preparing meal is still continued, and the
burning of the grain to remove the ears of corn and get rid of the
husk was practised in Skye till very recently.
The meal thus produced was called "graddan" meal, and was
highly esteemed and sold for several shillings more per boll than
the ordinary mill-made meal, and the Rev. Mr Macgregor told me